Wellmania
Misadventures in the Search for Wellness
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
The inspiration for the Netflix series starring Celeste Barber, Wellmania is an in-depth, entertaining, laugh-out-loud-funny exploration of wellness culture.
Now with a new preface by the author.
Cold-pressed juices, quitting sugar, Paleo, hot yoga, mindfulness … if you embrace these things you will be happy, you will be well – just ask Instagram. Wellness has become a global mega-industry. But does any of this stuff actually work?
Feeling exhausted, anxious and a bit flabby, journalist Brigid Delaney decides to find out – using herself as the guinea pig. Starting with a brutal 101-day fast, Brigid tests things that are meant to make us clean, lean and serene. Travelling the world, she tries colonics, meditation, silent retreats, group psychotherapy and oodles of yoga, working out what is helpful and what is just expensive hype.
In monasteries and health farms, on hiking trails and massage tables, she asks, why do so many of us swing from indulgence to detox and back again? Is it possible to integrate good habits into your daily life? What does our obsession with wellness say about us? And why do you smell so bad when you haven’t eaten in seven days?
Wellmania is the highly entertaining and occasionally dangerous exploration of one of the most fascinating trends in our culture.
‘Brigid Delaney is the queen of calamity and a fearless, sane guide into the bizarre heart of our modern obsessions. This will make you groan in horror as much as it’ll make you laugh out loud.’ —Benjamin Law
‘A bloody entertaining read that leaves you wondering whether you want to do yoga and meditation or get mindlessly drunk and despair at the state of the world. Basically I wish that I’d written it.' —Judith Lucy
‘At last! A funny, well-written book about all the health and serenity treatments you’ve been too feeble personally to undertake.’ —Annabel Crabb
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Brigid Delaney is a very funny woman who happens to possess a wealth of hard-earned experience with the world of wellness fads. This Aussie journalist and novelist is wise to the charlatans and crackpots in the healthy-lifestyle game—but she also knows it'd be a mistake to throw the baby out with the organic, spring-fed bathwater. Wellmania is a thoughtful and thoroughly entertaining guide for those who are either curious about or confounded by the wellness industry.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Delaney, a lifestyle journalist, takes the reader through her 12-year search for wellness in this amusing memoir. She belatedly realizes that navel-gazing may not be healthy as she relentlessly pursues all that the wellness industry offers in sections titled after the holy trinity of wellness goals: "Clean" (eating healthily), "Lean" (getting into shape), and "Serene" (finding happiness). In "Clean," the reader joins her in a grueling 101-day fast in Australia, her homeland. She combines vivid descriptions, such as of a required daily herb drink described as resembling, in taste, flat beer with 10 cigarettes mixed in; hysterical accounts, such as of her stealing breakfast from a business associate; and medical explanations of what's really happening to her body. "Lean" looks at the benefits of daily yoga as well as its drawbacks, such as rampant consumerism and commodification. The meatiest section, "Serene," explores meditation retreats, from a spooky monastery to an off-the-wall new age retreat where psychotherapy is practiced. Delaney is generous in sharing her experiences and skillful in weaving them into reported facts, but stingy in doling out conclusions. She offers only two paragraphs of concrete advice, which basically boils down to "build a routine." Still, the book gives copious examples of how one could start doing that.
Customer Reviews
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Wellness
Loved, loved, loved it. Insightful, personal and accurate. Thank God the author braved some of these things so I don't have to. Definitely a must read book.